200th post giveaway!

I'm not sure what you'll win, but all you have to do is comment here on what your favorite post has been.

You have until January 28th and then I will randomly pick someone to be the winner...

Spice cupboard

Over the Christmas break I finally decided that I needed to do some major organizing in my spice cupboard. It was at the point where I usually had to take the spice bottles to find the one or two I needed for my recipe.

Here is before:

A friend had blogged about her amazing organizing of her spices here, so I decided to do something similar.

Here are all my tins washed and drying:


Here is one completed set:


Here are my 3 sets (with a little room to grow):


And my after picture of my cupboard:


It is so much more manageable now and nice to look at. I'm so glad that I did this project. But now I have 8 empty tins remaining.

My question for you is what spices can't you live without?

What spices should I get?

Meghan in the kitchen...

I was working in the kitchen over last weekend and Meghan was keeping me laughing with her doing some jigs and investigating the floor and cupboards.

Enjoy!

The study of a baby and a puppy...

On our last day visiting Joseph's sister and family, we went to an indoor inflatable gym. The kids loved it and were completely exhausted after an hour of running around and climbing.









If only there was one of these back here at home.

Last stop for Christmas festivities...

Our last stop in Michigan was Joseph's sister's family. They are a family of 7 with 5 adorable kids that Jase and Meghan love to play with. The oldest is 11 and the youngest is 5 months (although he seems so much older - already weighs almost as much as Meghan and wears 12 month clothes).

Meghan is completely infatuated with babies, so she was always nearby.

Here she is after dragging a step out from the kitchen... not too close now.

Hmmm, maybe I'm not quite close enough...

Let's get this a little closer...

This is better...

Now I can play too!

Just look at how cute this baby is!

Joseph and his sister and her husband prepping New Year's Eve food...

The kids painted woods figures as a craft the one day...

Here are 3 of the kids with the end products...

Then there was lots of silly time on the air mattress in the evening waiting for midnight. The only "kid" that made it to midnight was the 11 year old. Everyone else fell asleep watching movies or decided to go to bed on their own.




Meghan is a popcorn eater, so here she is stuffing herself with popcorn...

We had a wonderful time visiting with our families in Michigan. We hope to see you again soon!

Christmas at Gramma's

When the kids were ready for a nap, we left the Kent Family Christmas and headed for Heather's Gramma's house. We last saw Gramma F. in October over Fall Break, but it was great to see her again and stay with her for a few days. Jase and Meghan were both excited to see Gramma, get a couple presents (Meghan some pots and pans for her kitchen, grocery cart, and a cabbage patch doll; Jase got a lite brite and bumblebee transformer), and see Gramma's 2 dogs Molly and Muffin. It took a couple days to warm up to the little dog's again, but by the day we left Meghan was in love.

Meghan with Gramma

Jase and Gramma coloring

That first night there it was very windy and around 4a the electricity went out. Lucky for us my Gramma has a generator, so it really didn't change things too much (we had heat, water, some lights, and tv - what more do you need).

In the morning Heather's parents came to Gramma's house and brought a lot of presents.

Both kids really loved unwrapping presents this year, although after a few presents, Meghan was done and it took a few hours to unwrap the remaining presents (a very difficult thing for Jase to let happen - he wanted to unwrap them now)!

Some of their presents were a big stuffed dolphin and alligator, dollhouse, remote control hummer H3, clothes, batcave, dishes for kitchen, truck, games, coloring books, candy, crayons, mittens, puzzles, play-doh, a frog tent, and bath toys.

Here they are opening some gifts...

Here we are playing with the play-doh and Muffin...

Here the kids are loving the frog tent. This thing is huge (think full size bed huge), but they really love it - especially if we play in it with them!

Jase went up to Heather's parent's house for the night and the rest of us had an early night since we still didn't have electricity. Around 11p the lights came back on and we were lucky as there were still hundreds of thousands of people without electricity still due to the high winds (that is one thing I don't miss about living in Michigan - going without electricity for days).


The next day Heather's parents and Jase were meeting us at Heather's other grandparent's house. The kids got a couple more toys and Meghan was able to eat some more fudge (this is her favorite). While we were there, Meghan decided that she wanted to tackle and wrestle Jase. At least it made for some cute pictures!

Does the midget in your family ever find it fun to wrestle and tackle the giant?

Then we headed back to Gramma's house to have dinner, give the kid's baths, and then drive to Joseph's sisters house in southern Michigan. That visit will be the next post...